by Alexey Pehov
“You mean we’re already walking through the Red Spinney?”
“Well, where do you think we are? On the Street of the Sparks?” Kli-Kli asked acidly. “It’s obvious this is the Red Spinney.”
“It doesn’t look all that red to me; you’ve got something mixed up again, Kli-Kli,” Lamplighter said with a dubious chuckle.
“Open your eyes, Mumr. It’s night now! But in the daytime, and especially in early September, everything here is covered with redbrow flowers.”
“But the place doesn’t look anything like a spinney,” I said, supporting Lamplighter.
“Fools!” the jester said sulkily, and stopped talking to us.
That night the goblin was in a bad mood. But I think he was just feeling nervous.
I wasn’t feeling anything of the kind, and Valder wasn’t saying anything. But of course, he hadn’t said anything since I had that dream about the Master’s prison. Maybe the dead archmagician had finally left me in peace and gone his own way? Ha! There wasn’t much hope of that happening.
Who was Valder? I thought I’d already told you that. Valder was a magician who had unfortunately been killed because of the Rainbow Horn a few hundred years earlier, but had now moved into my head.… All right, it’s a long story, maybe someday I’ll write my memoirs, and then you’ll know all the details.
The grassy path rustled under our feet and Lamplighter’s back loomed close in front of my eyes. How many hundreds of steps had I taken since we left the ruins of the city of Chu?
It was already long past the middle of the night, the stars were floating across the sky, and the moon was getting brighter and brighter. The entire forest had been taken over by redbrow—it was growing under almost every golden-leaf. I thought there would never be an end to these accursed bushes. But what really annoyed me was the sour smell the blossoming bushes gave off. It worked its way up my nose, and after about an hour and a half of it, my head was splitting, and I had this monstrous urge to sneeze.
The deeper we went into the Red Spinney, the tenser the silence became. I couldn’t hear the usual whisper of the wind or rustling of the branches anymore, or the calls of the night birds or the buzzing of the nocturnal insects. Not a single glowworm … and there was no more sign of any forest spirits. Nothing but the quiet rustling of our footsteps drifting into the night.
All the life of the forest seemed to have died. The silence was oppressive and it made me feel vaguely anxious. Even the moonlight looked dead now, draped across the landscape like a pale shroud.
Behind me I heard the quiet rustle of a weapon being drawn from its scabbard. I looked back. Milord Alistan was walking with his naked sword in his hand, and the count’s face looked gloomy and anxious.
“I do-on’t li-ike this si-ilence,” Kli-Kli muttered, drawing out each word.
“It’s never killed anyone yet.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Harold. It has, it definitely has,” our little know-it-all replied.
For the next half hour we didn’t say a single word to each other. Everyone was listening to the silence that enveloped everything, hoping to catch at least some kind of sound apart from the rustle of our own steps.
That’s always the way of it. You never took any notice of the sounds around you, just took them for granted. A bird chirped on one side, a cricket chirred on the other, leaves rustled somewhere else. But as soon as the sounds your ear was used to disappeared, you realized how much you missed all this outside chattering and nattering that could sometimes be so very annoying.
“We’re here,” Hallas hissed through clenched teeth, tightening his grip on his battle-mattock.
The path ran onto a bridge that looked as old as Chu. I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least if it was the work of the same builders. But unlike the city, the bridge was still intact.
It was made of stone, thirty yards long and two yards wide. Two men could easily walk across it together. Running along the sides, taking the place of railings, were stone barriers, rising up to half the height of a man. Every few yards a column rose up out of the barriers to twice the height of a man. They had probably once supported a roof (which no longer existed). Or perhaps there never had been any roof, and the columns had been put there simply as decoration.
The bridge connected the two sides of a ravine or gorge—I don’t know what it was called, but the steep sides descended almost vertically into darkness filled with a silvery mist rising from an invisible bottom.
“This is the heart of the Spinney,” Kli-Kli informed us.
“We have to cross that? Somehow it doesn’t inspire me with confidence.”
“Don’t worry, Milord Alistan, the bridge is stronger than a cliff and has stood here for thousands of years,” Miralissa reassured the captain of the royal guard. “So let us not delay.”
“Wait,” said Eel, raising one hand and peering keenly at the far bank of the Spinney. “Lady Miralissa, Egrassa, you take your bows, and Deler and I will cross to the other side.”
“Eel’s right, if there’s an ambush over there, they’ll pick us all off on the bridge like plump partridges,” said the dwarf, changing his beloved hat for his helmet.
“All right,” Alistan Markauz said curtly, and nodded. “Go.”
The dwarf ran ahead with the blade of his battle-ax glimmering ominously in the moonlight. Egrassa and Miralissa stood with their bows bent, ready to fire. The two warriors ran across the bridge and disappeared into the bushes of redbrow.
I started counting to myself. When I reached sixteen, Eel appeared and beckoned to us with his hand. It was our turn now. Very soon the only ones left on the first side were Egrassa, with his bow still bent, and Lamplighter, covering the elf against any possible danger from the rear.
“Is it a long way down?” I asked the goblin halfway across the bridge.
“I’ve never been here before, just like you.”
“It’s just that you seem to know all these places so very well.…”
“To know places, you don’t have to have been there before, Harold. How do the gnomes and the dwarves find their way through their underground labyrinths? They’re children of the mountains, and they don’t have to ask every time which way is east and which way is west. The goblins, dryads, elves, and orcs are the children of Zagraba and we never get lost in it. We always know where we are, no matter which part of the forest we happen to be in. That’s something you men can’t understand.”
We carried on along our way. The redbrow started to thin out. The fir trees and larches gradually edged the bushes aside and the cursed smell of those flowers almost disappeared, but the silence still hadn’t gone away. Our group was still in the Spinney.
We walked on and on and on. The light sack gradually began pulling me down toward the ground, the chain mail chafed my shoulders and weighed heavy on my back, my legs were tight knots of pain and fatigue. It was well past time for us to call a halt, we’d been tramping along for hours, but Egrassa only stepped up the pace, trying to get us out of the Spinney as soon as possible.
Kli-Kli was the first to sense that something was wrong. He stumbled, looked back, and drew in a sharp breath of the night air.
“Kli-Kli, please don’t stop,” Hallas said to the goblin.
“Something’s not right,” the goblin said anxiously.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” the fool muttered, and hurried on.
Then Egrassa stopped and raised his hand to tell us to make less noise. The elf listened carefully to the gloomy darkness of the nighttime forest and then said something to Miralissa in their guttural orcic tongue.
She replied in the same language, and Egrassa led us on again. The elves kept looking back. I couldn’t help myself and looked back, too, but there was nothing behind us except a narrow path silvered by moonlight and dark walls of fir trees rising up on both sides of it.
“What’s happening?” asked Alistan Markauz.
“Nothing yet, milord, just don’t fal
l behind,” said the elf, almost switching into a run.
Miralissa was muttering something to herself and occasionally fluttering her hands. I realized with horror that she was preparing some spell as we walked along. May the darkness drink me—could they tell us what was going on or not?
Kli-Kli was skipping along ahead of me, with his sack bouncing up and down on his back—it wasn’t easy for the little goblin to keep up with the pace set for us by Egrassa.
The goblin was whining quietly. At first I thought he was just breathing like that from the effort, but then I realized: Kli-Kli was whining in fear. And that was when I got frightened.
Very frightened.
“Kli-Kli!” I growled at him. “Give me your sack, it won’t be so hard for you keep up!”
The jester looked at me. His blue eyes were full of primal animal terror. I had to repeat what I’d said before he understood what I wanted him to do. The goblin didn’t argue, and immediately handed me the little sack with his bits and pieces in it.
“What’s going on?” I said, repeating the question I’d already asked.
“A flute!” the jester squeaked.
“In the name of darkness, what flute?”
“Just keep moving quickly, all right?”
That was all I could get out of him.
And then I heard it. And when I heard it, for the first second I couldn’t even believe it was possible. The silence was broken by a pure crystal trilling sound. It was barely even audible—the unknown flautist who was drunk enough to play in the forest at night was quite a long distance away. The flute broke the silence of the night so unexpectedly that I stopped dead on the spot and Deler crashed into me.
“Move, Harold, if you want to stay alive! I don’t know what that thing behind us is, but I’m sure it doesn’t mean us any good.”
Egrassa broke into a run. There was another trill of the flute, much closer than before, and then I realized what it was that was gaining on us. Only one creature made sounds that resembled a trilling flute so closely. And the orcs had named this monster the terrible flute, or h’san’kor.
“Sagot save us all,” I blurted out.
“That’s not very likely! Just run, Harold!”
And we ran. Each time the trilling sounded closer and closer. And those flute sounds urged us on better than any bull whip could have done. Whatever this beast that was used to frighten us in our distant childhoods might be, it was running very fast, a lot faster than us.
“I … thought … they … all … died out … long … ago … or they … were … just … a … fairy … story,” Lamplighter gasped.
He threw away his sack; the weight of his bidenhander was enough for him now. But Alistan was the one having the hardest time. The captain of the guard eventually had to give up: He threw away his helmet, then his shield, and then came the turn for his small mace. The only weapons the count was left with were his sword and dagger.
“As you see … not all of them,” Kli-Kli wheezed. “This one’s definitely alive … and hungry. He’s no fairy story.…”
“Why are we running?” I panted. “Three more minutes of this and I’ll die.”
“So he … won’t eat us … you fool! We’re waiting … for Miralissa … to work a spell!”
I wish she’d get a move on, I thought. Sagot, if you can hear me, please hurry her on a bit.
The trees fused into a single flickering blur. The world shrank to a narrow path, Kli-Kli’s back, the wheezing in my chest, Miralissa’s muttering, and the howls of a h’san’kor on the hunt. The sweat smothered my eyes, my hair was glued to my forehead. I wanted to stop, fall to the ground, and die right there. But everyone was running, and I had no choice but to keep running with them.
“Drop … both … the sacks,” Kli-Kli advised me in a squeak.
I gratefully tossed his sack away and dropped my own off my shoulders; then it was a lot easier to run. If only I could have dumped the chain mail—but for that I would have had to stop, and stopping now was the shortest way into the belly of the beast.
A flute trilled … and a second later another replied.
“There are two of them!” Kli-Kli squealed.
At that very moment Miralissa finished muttering, and the bushes on the right of the path parted to form a passage.
“That way!” the elfess gasped.
We didn’t need to be told twice. As soon as we left the path, the bushes closed together behind us and the trampled grass sprang back up as if our feet had never touched it. Our group was in a grove of fir trees, surrounded by pitch blackness. There was a strange blink and a cold tremor ran over my body.
“We’re invisible now, but lie down just in case!” Miralissa ordered. “Kli-Kli, your people know defensive spells. The magic of the elves has almost no effect on a h’san’kor. You help!”
“I don’t know anything,” the frightened goblin whinged. “Only the little bit my granddad taught me!”
“Do what you can!” the elfess hissed furiously, sprinkling some powder through the air.
Kli-Kli nodded and started spinning like a top. After ten long seconds the goblin collapsed on the ground and for a brief instant the world around us flared pink. I didn’t know what it was, but Miralissa nodded approvingly.
“Good, now don’t move, don’t even breathe. Now you’re nothing but tree roots for the flute. For a minute at least…”
She murmured the last words very, very quietly.
We really were in the mother of all fixes.
Almost nothing was known about the h’san’kor, which was only natural, since those who had encountered one didn’t usually tell anyone about it, because of their sudden death. So all our knowledge of terrible flutes amounted to no more than terrible legends from the elves and goblins about these mysterious monsters of the forest and a few engravings of bodies of flutes (I personally had no idea at all of what the beast looked like).
Two bodies of h’san’kors that were found by particularly brave trappers who wandered into the Golden Forest were sold for huge amounts of money (one went to the Order of Magicians, the other was bought by some collector). And also, about three hundred years earlier, a certain very brave and stupid baron from the Borderland had organized a h’san’kor hunt. Half of his men lost their lives, but they did manage to capture one of the monsters alive. The magicians of the Order, drooling at the mouth, were hurrying to the baron’s castle, but the flute decided not to wait. It smashed apart the cage in which it had foolishly been detained and killed everyone in the castle and the neighboring village. Then it waited for the magicians and finished off almost all of them. It turned out that battle magic had no effect at all on the beast, and so three adepts and seven acolytes were lost. It was a stroke of luck that the members of the Order included an archmagician, who killed the monster by dropping a nearby windmill on its head.
But these were tales of times long past. We didn’t happen to have an inventive archmagician or spare windmill with us. We just lay there on the ground, not moving and barely breathing. The trill of a flute sounded again. O, so close, the darkness take me! The first flute was immediately answered by a second.
“I’m a log, I’m invisible,” I whispered quietly. The hair on my head stood up in terror.
Kli-Kli gave me a very painful kick and put one finger to his lips. I blinked at him to say: I understand, not a sound.
Our refuge had a magnificent view of the path. The silence of the night was broken occasionally by trilling flutes, and the only thing I could do was pray to Sagot that we wouldn’t be noticed.
“They’re chasing someone!” Mumr whispered, earning himself a painful dig from Eel.
What I saw a moment later is etched in my memory forever.
A man came running along the path. Not even running, but flying, putting all his strength into it. The stranger’s feet were barely even touching the ground, he was moving in immense leaps to get away from the monsters pursuing him. His boot touched the ground, pushed of
f, and the man flew a good three yards, another touch of the ground, another long leap. I’d gladly have bet that if the lad really wanted, he could have matched the speed of a horse. A gray cloak fluttered out behind his shoulders like a night bird’s wings, his face was hidden by a hood. In his hands the man was holding a spear with a black shaft and a very broad leaf-shaped blade.
In the space of four seconds the man appeared, ran past us, and disappeared behind the trees.
And then they came.
A flute sang again, and a creature leapt out from round the corner. It ran past so quickly that I couldn’t even see it clearly—it was a blur of red, black, and green with absurdly long arms and legs. The h’san’kor was gone in an instant. The beast was too intent on pursuing its quarry to take any notice of us, and anyway, thanks to Miralissa and Kli-Kli, we had become invisible to its eyes for a while.
Another flute sounded to say that it was getting close, and the h’san’kor that had run past us replied.
The second beast burst out onto the track, unexpectedly stumbled, and stopped exactly opposite our hiding place. Its eyes, blazing with purple fire, looked in our direction. I pressed myself down into the ground. Now I could get a very good view of the creature.
The tall figure, three times the height of a man, seemed absurdly thin. It had immensely long arms and legs and the neck supporting the head was as skinny as the body. The h’san’kor’s head looked like some bizarre frog’s skull with skin tightly stretched over it.
I couldn’t see any fur or scales on the beast, its skin was entirely covered in red, black, and green stripes. The nose was a black hollow; the huge eyes filled with purple flame covered half the face; there were short, curled horns on the head; and the mouth … For some reason I’d thought it would be filled with teeth, but when the beast parted its lips and grinned, I saw it had no more than five crooked, yellow stumps in its jaws. No armor or clothing, but one clawed hand was clutching something like a spiked club, and in its left hand it was holding the sack I had abandoned only five minutes earlier.
I felt icy worms stir in my stomach. It had to see us now! But it mustn’t see us!